Not really a "pilgrimage". In fact, I was in Denver for two days before I remembered that Mile High Comics was in Denver. I kept seeing "Mile High This" and "Mile High That" when all the sudden I thought of Mile High Comics. I told my traveling buddy, "Mile High Comics is here. We need to go there."
We found it, but at first we were sure the GPS was wrong. I thought we must have only been outside the giant warehouse where they must fill their orders. After all, it took us to the concrete steps outside a giant warehouse. I asked me friend Dave, "This surely isn't it. Let's just go find the Broncos Stadium." He said we might as well give it a try.
We walked up the steps and I gingerly opened the door. There were posters inside of various comic book characters. I said, "Well, we're in the right place, maybe." We walked in what looked like the custodians' entrance to my school and into a great big place covered wall to wall in comic books.
Because it was Comicon weekend, the main guys had taken the most recent stuff there, but there was still plenty for us to look at. He bought a Milk and Cheese TPB, and I bought five bucks worth of cheapie comics, which included my long-sought-after Batman: Jazz 3-issue mini. We took pictures (I'll post some here as soon as they're uploaded) and talked football with the guy for about twenty or thirty minutes*, and then we took off. It was a great little part of a good week. It felt like kind of a pilgrimage in retrospect to go to the world's largest comic book store, even if that wasn't originally my intention.
*For those not in the know of anything football, Denver recently acquired Peyton Manning from Indianapolis (where I'm from), and got rid of Tim Tebow, so there was much to discuss. The guy there had been a Broncos fan since 1972, so it was a lot of fun discussion. After this was over, I went and bought a Broncos Peyton Manning t-shirt. Can't wait to wear it and piss off people around here!
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Reminds me of the time I talked my wife into going with me to try and find the MST3K studios when we were in Minneapolis. We were driving through a suburban office park and I was pretty sure that we were on the wrong track, until I saw a mail box that just said "Brains."
I assume you're talking about the Jason St. Mega Store. I've always wanted to visit; I used to buy a lot of comics from Mile High online. It looks huge in the photo on the website, but it also doesn't have regular hours. So I guess it shouldn't be surprising that the signage isn't that great. But I'm still surprised.
Yup, it was on Jason Street! Very industrial-looking area near some kind of run-down neighborhoods. There were also some other satellite stores on the website, but this is the big one. I'll post some pictures when I get around to it.
[The "jawdrop" smilie is not available, but this one fits almost as well.]
Wow, that is pretty sweet.
And no, I didn't cut out one of the signs on the outside of the building. It really just says, "High Comics".
I was in Denver last week and made the pilgrimage to Mile High Comics. One thing that made it cool to me was that it's located on Jason street!
The place is huge. I spent about 30 minutes walking the perimeter of the store looking at all the comics on the wall. I also browsed most of the aisles. Then I start digging through the huge selection of $1 comics looking for Amazing Spider-man issues to fill in the holes of my collection. Then I moved to their back issues, fortunately they were having a sale.
One cool thing was while I was walking around an older gentleman walked up to me and asked if I was enjoying the store. I told him I was. He said they try to work every day to make the store look nice. I told him that he was and that i was from Florida so this was a treat for me. He then made a hanging chad joke. We chatted a minute and he told me to ask him or the other guy working if I needed anything. I thought about asking if he was the owner but declined. Later I googled Mile High Comics and saw his picture pop up several times. Sure enough, he was the owner of Mile High Comics.
Awesome, Jason! Glad to know you were able to visit as well. It's kind of off in the corner of nowhere, isn't it? But really cool.